


Underside Of My Tongue

by criacuervos



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Christian Bible (New Testament), Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Body Horror, Escapril Poetry Challenge, Escapril Poetry Challenge 2020, Fairy Tale Elements, Multi, Poetry, Short One Shot, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 5,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23960041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/criacuervos/pseuds/criacuervos
Summary: Text messages between the goddesses of Day and Dawn. Audio files found on a phone with a cracked screen. Primordial Chaos yawns. The first twelve children of Gaea. Daedalus builds his son wings. Voicemails Narcissus sent Echo. Astrology loves and is loved by the Stars. Persephone wakes up with Hades next to her on the bed. Pandora writes notes for Prometheus. The Gospel according to [redacted]. The naiads are having a party. The gods have left Olympus. The average weight of your organs. Ariadne drank nectar and ate ambrosia. Athena claims the Golden Apple of Discord. Orpheus griefs before descending to the Underworld. The constellation Orion. A laurel tree. Notes Selene never sent Endymion. Flowers that crack bone. If you go into the forest. The Fates live together in an apartment. Gaea deletes the messages from Tartarus. The end of the House of Labdacus. The curse befallen on Medusa. A fairytale: animal bride. Briseis as the warning to the Trojans. The five Rivers of the Underworld. The nymphs of dusk.
Relationships: Ariadne/Dionysus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Artemis/Orion (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Astraeus/Urania of the Muses (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Athena/Medusa (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Echo/Narcissus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Endymion/Selene (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Eurydice wife of Orpheus/Orpheus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Hades/Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Pandora/Prometheus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	1. dawn

**5:00am, Hemera said:** i came out of the womb of night made out of light

 **5:10am, Eos said:** i brought the sun out by the hand but my brother grabbed its wrists, leaving me resting on the horizon to remain with pale blue dresses and pastel pink hair 

**5:25am, Hemera said:** it was my hair that came blue. night and darkness were awestruck by the golden of my eyes and the bottom of my throat, like i carried the sun in my stomach before the concept of him had even been conceived

 **5:32am, Eos said:** i have never seen the colour of my ichor but it is more than air and less than liquid, blue hour and dawn grey. the pink, purple and orange are only on the roof of my mouth and the inside of my cheeks and the underside of my tongue

 **5:47am, Hemera said:** i have a sister of liminal spaces

 **5:59am, Eos said:** i have a sister of moonlight who falls asleep when i awake

 **6:02am, Hemera said:** recognise my light as a miracle

 **6:03am, Eos said:** recognise my light as birth


	2. growth/decay

**[ found on the audio files of a phone with a cracked screen ]**

**#1:** hear my voice change as i die

 **#2:** [ a two-minute recording of songbirds ]

 **#3:** so far, i have had no strong revelations about my own mortality but this is what is happening: i can taste blood between my teeth, i can feel the leaves growing from my eyes, i can smell the petrichor of the earth, i can hear the roots finding anchor on the vertebrae of my spine, i cannot see anymore

 **#4:** [ there is laughter ] a handful of sunflower seeds and a handful of bluebells and a handful of foxglove and a handful of chrysanthemum

 **#5:** my stomach proved too fertile for flowers and my skin too flimsy to keep them inside. all eglantine did was throw up the calendulas and peonies and amaryllis and orchids

 **#6:** [ the voice wheezes ] they found my lungs

 **#7:** crows ate the songbirds and they wait to feast on me next. only if they find me under the garden taking root on my organs and skeleton, that is

 **#8:** [ there is the sound of crows squawking and the voice retching, of something like branches snapping, the recording ends when the phone dies and the last thing heard are the crows as it starts to rain ]


	3. is anyone listening?

I existed for [ redacted ]. Earth and Sky hadn’t conceived Time and I slept, I can’t remember.

I existed for [ redacted ]. Love and the Abyss and Earth were there and I yawned and then opened my eyes.

I existed for [ redacted ]. My daughter and son were Night and Darkness.

I existed for [ redacted ]. My granddaughters were Day and Ether.

I existed for [ redacted ]. I didn’t have to hold these deities up in emptiness anymore, Aether filled the chaos and held the matter.

I existed for a minute. Time wrote it down on the last page of a spiral notebook he then lost, but there was no time of birth or time of death. I didn’t live and I didn’t die. I don’t think I ever woke up and the lineages of gods and spirits are just dreams of mine — though Sleep and Dreams hadn’t been born.

Signed,  
Chaos


	4. earthly pleasures

**i. Theia:** my first daughter was to tint the darkness in colour (all her walls are made of glass, now)

 **ii. Oceanus:** my first son to damp my dry and cracking skin (he hasn’t seen the surface since birth)

 **iii. Rhea:** my second daughter I held close to my chest and offered her the fertility of the Earth to put in her womb and between her legs (not many mothers can say their son is a king)

 **iv. Coeus:** my husband turned at an axis and the constellations rolled on the expanse of the skull atop my second son (holding the northern pillar with a star as the fixed point)

 **v. Themis:** they ignored the words of my third daughter (the scale of her hands lifted and lowered but never remained even on the centre)

 **vi. Krios:** my third son was made out of stars with the south pillar breaking his spine (there are rumours he cut the horns of the Aries)

 **vii. Mnemosyne:** my fourth daughter remembers better than others (still she writes reminders on the inside of her forearm and alarms pin with things to do at 4:31am)

 **viii. Hyperion:** my fourth son shined through every crack on his skeleton (he was the eastern pillar and from it rose the sun)

 **ix. Phoebe:** Night had already birthed Fate in a triad, my fifth daughter could foresee it (she is terrified of leaving the house and doesn’t answer any phone calls)

 **x. Iapetus:** my fifth son knew mortality but never died (western pillar to keep the Sky from touching me again)

 **xi. Thetys:** my sixth daughter nourished in my old age as I nourished her with water (fresh where the Ocean was bitter)

 **xii. Cronus:** my sixth son castrated his father, liberated me (took a hold of Time and swallowed it whole)


	5. the view from up here

**[ found on the last page of a spiral notebook, the cover has the name DAEDALUS written on top a strip of scotch tape ]**

Things needed to fly:

  * Wings I will craft myself because there is no bird with the span to fit the shoulder blades of my son.
  * A cliff to jump off or a cliff where the wind will pull you in and give you no choice.
  * The ocean far enough and the sun unattainable (maybe he should fly at night).
  * Icarus with a desire, wonder, a dream no father can say they have fulfilled.



Variables left to chance:

  * The inhale of breath from the Ocean because he is alive (the nymphs of saltwater might be tender).
  * The beckoning of the sunlight and the grin of Apollo (he will burn Icarus before he has even crashed to the waves).
  * Minos gave no date for the gun barrel that will touch the back of my head and the bullet that will pierce my skull (Icarus must be on another shore when it happens).




	6. obsession

The voicemail from Narcissus would say: _how can I know you will love me as I deserve?_

Echo would murmur to herself, phone playing on speaker while resting on her chest as she stared at the daffodils (plastic to keep them from dying) on her desk: _how can I know you can love someone other than yourself?_

The voicemail from Narcissus would say: _my reflection in the mirror moved quicker than I did and he looked like someone different from me, I could almost call him my soulmate_

Echo would murmur to herself, phone playing on speaker while resting next to her ear on the pillow as she looked at her hands to ensure she wasn’t fading away: _my reflection in the mirror disappeared for three seconds and she looked like no one because she is no one so I am no one_

The voicemail from Narcissus would say: _do you feel like I have wronged you?_

Echo would murmur to herself, phone playing on speaker while resting clutch in her hand as she pressed her eyes shut: _do you even remember my name?_


	7. chemical reaction

Astrology looks at the Stars and says: _you are a magnificence of hydrogen burning._

Urania looks at Astraeus and grabs his lips between her teeth, listens to him breathe and puts her hands on his ribs to feel them expand. When her eyes are closed she almost believes he is shining and burning, she almost tastes iron and raw nitrogen and when there is ichor on her tongue it falls like fuel. If they float it’s just the helium and if they don’t then the atmosphere is too heavy and the pressure is there to crush them.

The Stars looks at Astrology and says: _you are a magnificence of celestial bodies aligning on the axis of your spine_.

Astraeus looks at Urania and he can only list the constellations dotting her as if they imprinted from fitting her body on every curve of his. He almost believes she drew them herself or punctured them with a brass compass. Sagittarius on the left shoulder blade. Capricorn on the inside of her right arm. Leo on the small of her back. Pisces on her left collarbone. Virgo on her pelvis. When he tastes ichor it tastes like copper instead of gold.


	8. hometown

Electra grabs the gun from Orestes and points it at her mother, pulse shaking.

Clytemnestra is in rags, the Queen is in rags, and she opens her mouth a quarter as if to take the barrel into her mouth and make the way for the bullet easier. All in her power to choose where Iphigenia couldn’t, brought to the altar and killed with a bullet no one was around to see or hear.

The only blood on Electra’s thighs are from the ricochet of the first gunshot that caught her brother and splattered on her. No infant she claimed to have had that lured the Queen back to her.

Orestes holds his arm, waits.

“Electra,” says the Queen.

Electra doesn’t say or repeat all the things she already told Orestes. All the _she killed father, she committed adultery, she forced you to leave me._ Instead she puts her finger on the trigger and says: “You sent me away.”

Clytemnestra opens her mouth wider.

“I’m so alone,” says Electra.

The Queen closes her eyes.

“This isn’t home, but home wasn’t home.”

And finally.

“Mum.” Electra drops the gun.


	9. natural light

_It’s the cleave on the earth, in the garden of my mother, that pours morning sunlight into the depths and helps flowers grow in a patch._

Persephone writes with a pencil on the bone white wall. She draws an arrow and makes it point towards the blinds, just barely cracked and showing in narrow sections the periwinkle and lilac and vanilla of the dawn. Next to her on the bed, angled at every bone and with his face in her hair, Hades hums. There is more periwinkle than lilac and vanilla, a lot less of a grey overlay. The light is brighter, it bounces off the King but the Queen absorbs it into her skin and into her eyes and into the roof of her mouth. Flowers growing as a dream from her skull also soak it in. Hades looks like he has black diamonds growing from him too, but between his teeth.

_The flowers that grow with the soil of the Underworld have jewelled anthers and laminated rose gold petals and wire-drawn copper roots._

And Persephone draws an asphodel with a crown.


	10. parasitic

**[ written on a blue stick-it note Pandora leaves in Prometheus’ room before she leaves for the movies with Emipitheus ]** Your fault.

 **[ written on the first page of a journal with a purple permanent marker that leaks onto the next pages with the reassurance Prometheus will never see this (even though he will but it will be an accident when Pandora leaves her room with him still in it and her journal happens to be open on the desk) ]** Others are allowed to be whoever they want but I had my decisions mapped out since my creation — because I wasn’t birthed, I was made, did you know that? — and had no say on whether I wanted to open the urn and spill the evils. My handcrafted wit was to bring me to that while making it feel I had any will.

 **[ written on a text message sent at 3:54am when Pandora thought he had already fallen asleep ]** I didn’t ask to be made, and even if I had being created to punish for what you did wouldn’t have been the context I’d choose. I would have chosen to be made to be loved. **[ Pandora deleted the text (but Prometheus read it on the lockscreen) ]**

 **[ written on the wall of a fine looking building where everyone can see ]** ELPIS, GODDESS OF HOPE, HASN’T LEFT US.

 **[ written on the margin of Prometheus’ book on human law with a pink pen and Pandora’s handwriting ]** And despite… I love you. **[ Epimitheus is sitting across from Prometheus on the kitchen, Pandora between then ]**

 **[ written on a text sent at 11:02pm when Pandora knows he won’t be asleep ]** I love you because I feel you would have chosen me for me, not for being the gift of the gods and despite the urn with all the evils. I know you would have known what was inside. I think you would have stopped me and the evils plaguing wouldn’t be my fault if I was in your hands. **[ she keeps _I never loved Epimitheus_ to herself because she doesn’t know if it’s true ]**

 **[ written on the inside of Pandora’s hand with red marker and Prometheus’ bold and all caps letters (he asked her to close her eyes until he was done) ]** I love you.


	11. heaven/hell

[ Footage from a surveillance camera on the corner of the street, with a perfect view of the temple and the mob and the Messiah tied with chains and iron nails to a cross. The image is in colour but grainy. Soldiers are positioned to keep the crowd in check, rifles up. On either side of the Messiah is a criminal, neither is lifted in the air like he is and their heads hang low where the Messiah leans his back to face the vanilla white and heather pink sky. The Apostles are hidden amongst all the other faces. On the bed of a pick-up truck stand two women, the older is bent forward and if the camera had audio you could surely hear her wails. Mary Magdalene puts her hand on the back of the Messiah’s mother with a boy clinging to her leg. The soldiers raise their rifles when the mob pushes forward. The Messiah breaths in, camera too far to show how he pleas and cries and prays. The Messiah drops his head and the sky goes black ]


	12. submerged in water

A list of things naiads do under the surface

  * Forget where we begin and where we end, because the flow of the river and the pool of the lake is all the same water and that waster is us. We swirl without a sense of self but it helps us get into a dance.
  * Forget the names of the fish and critters swimming across our abdomens and skulls.
  * Forget promises made about not looking at the boys and girls who lean over the surface, because we will fall in love and that will lead them to drown.
  * Forget not everyone breathes water.
  * Forget about not breaking the surface and almost choking on the air, but it worth it for the look of the sun coming through the branches and the stars on the partings between the trees and the butterflies too afraid to come near and the white deer that drink us up.
  * Forget some of us were human once, too, before a god decided to punish us and strip all autonomy. Those same gods clean their hands on our water sometimes. Some of us were princesses or queens. Some of us would still respond to our names but no one calls them by the shore.




	13. the city

Zeus finds another woman leaving the theatre, offers her his arm, offers her a drink, offers her a place to sleep that night. Hera’s high heels click up and down the marble steps of a nondescript building. Poseidon sits with legs swinging from the bridge and over the river and the cars pass him without a glance. Demeter holds a wide-brim wicker hat decorated in supermarket flowers and dark shoulders speckled in ever darker freckles from the sun. Ares guides the knife-bearing thieves into the alley on purpose and only he emerges later, none of the neighbours heard a gun but the bodies were shot between the ribs. Athena is standing under the light of a lamppost, silver keychain shaped like an owl swinging, speaking with a man with eyes that bear the cunning of hers. Apollo’s hands are held by an Oracle dressed in sequins and her mouth with glittery lipgloss kisses his neck, he offers her all his prophecies. Artemis sits on a balcony that is not hers with fingers cupped into a pretend telescope to see the stars through the city lights. Hephaestus changed the bulbs of the lampposts and the emergency lights in back alleys. Aphrodite is found in an art gallery, leaving lipstick smears on the statues and then kissing nameless faces behind pillars. Dionysus is purple, purple and purple underneath the neon lights that read _BAR_ and the cheap unregistered liquor dribbling from his chin. Hestia walked the same little girl to and from home seven separate times. Hades dotes a suit to find a greenhouse with daffodils and a store with pomegranates.


	14. pink, like your brain

**[ audio recording found in a computer, two voices are discernible ]**

_Are you writing this down?_ Yes. _Alright, then get this: the brain is 1388 grams. Got it?_ Yes, got it. _The flowers inside are: azalea, begonia, butterfly bush pink delight and dahlia._ They’re all pink. _Yes, they are all pink. They are always pink. Sometimes they are red and sometimes they are purple. Are you still writing?_ Yes, I’m still writing. _The heart is 302 grams and the flowers are zinnia and amaryllis. The lungs, two and together, are 1.3 kilograms. Christ, they are filled to the brim with stargazer._ Those look like bruises. _Did you write down what I said?_ I did, I did. Bruised stargazer. _No, just stargazer. The flowers are perfectly fine, pristine, it’s the organs that are mangled. The stomach is 95 grams. The flowers are all pink too: hollyhock, peony, meadowsweet, petunia, primrose, rocktrumpet and snapdragon. Got it?_ Yes, got it. _Alright, onto the next one._


	15. euphoria

**Things Ariadne felt when she drank nectar and ate ambrosia.**

Wine rolling as thick as honey down her throat. The wired gold of the thread tangled on her fingers. Shortness of breath (Asterion closing his fist around her neck). Toes digging in fine, tan sand. A crown that weighs less than the last she wore. The sky boiling with bruised crowds. Ocean water in her stomach. A scream so shrill all the neighbouring islands can hear. Gossamer curtains blown by a sunshine breeze. The trigger of a gun biting on her finger. Diamonds slotted behind her molars. The smell of grapes. Theseus’ kiss on the corner of her mouth (that has a tinge of blood). Nausea caused by vertigo. The true meaning of infinity written on the underside of her skin. Deep breaths that will never fill her lungs again. Dionysus’ kiss on her stomach and knee. Adding _“In”_ before _“Mortal”_.


	16. bearing fruit

Athena plucked the golden apple from Hera’s hands after it went through her and Aphrodite. Other than the printed words — _"to the most beautiful"_ — there were teeth marks, thin black lines, as if Eris had meant to take a bite but recoiled at the last second.

“Can I see?” asks Artemis.

“No,” says Athena. “Can I keep this?”

Athena raises her voice to be heard over Aphrodite and Hera, both goddesses up from their seats. Jaw clenched when they turn their eyes on her. The regalness of Hera, dressed in purple and green and golden and blue, to contrast the boldness of Aphrodite, dressed in coral orange and pink and yellow, and both wearing crowns but one made with gold and one made with roses still with the thorns. Athena raises her chin, pendants ending in silver owls dangling on her ears wearing no crown and just a headband the colour blue.

“It’s for the most beautiful,” Aphrodite says, cheeks speckled in freckles. “Which is me.”

“I’m _the_ Queen,” Hera says. “The golden apple is mine.”

“Well…” Athena says. “I want it.”


	17. grief

**one month ago, Eurydice said:** I’ll be waiting under the oak tree!

_— new messages —_

**1:12am, Orpheus said:** The world responds to my music. Whenever I play… everything weeps. Everything. I don’t think the nymphs want to listen but they have to. My music isn’t any more optional than the yield of the ocean to Poseidon or the obedience of the forest to Artemis, this is my divinity. Even if I am more human than most minor gods, I once saw my ichor look red, but that doesn’t change my parentage. Part of me is still divine, so I am not my own. I am the world’s as well. I can’t even make music anymore because if I do then the trees and the flowers will die, the rivers will dry. I can’t mourn because if I mourn and I sing then the world mourns with me.

 **1:14am Orpheus:** Apollo called me and he said the world can’t handle my grief.

 **1:14am, Orpheus said:** But this is my grief. I lost you. I loved you.

_**1:20am, Orpheus said:** (unsent) I felt my heart robbed straight from my ribcage, not a single bone broke, just plucked cleanly from underneath._

**1:22am, Orpheus said:** So, I’ve drowned myself in wine. All the wine left from our wedding.

 **1:23am, Orpheus said:** It was supposed to be for the libations at your grave but, what grave? Should I pour it on the trunk of your fallen tree? There weren’t any bones to bury.


	18. how did the sky look?

Artemis’ hands, coated in blood, smear under Orion’s jaw as she holds his head on her lap. “Look at the moon. Just look at the moon and don’t think of anything else. Don’t think of the pain, of the bullet, of what happened a minute ago. Just look at the moon.”

Orion looks at her, eyes coloured as if they were sculpted in bronze. Artemis tries to hold her tears. With blood going from the bullet hole to her fingers to his neck he looks like she cut his throat open instead.

“I’m looking.” His teeth and tongue are red too. “I’m looking at the moon.”

“What does she look like?”

“The stars are gathering above her head like a crown, and she— Artemis, don’t cry.”

“I’m so sorry.” Her forehead pressed against his, upside down. “Apollo, he— Orion, I never meant to hurt you. I was tricked.”

“And I know that.”

Her thumbs rub his cheeks, the blood is drying. “Open your mouth.”

His breath stinks like metal. Artemis leans with her mouth open too and her hands holding Orion again underneath his jaw, she breathes in one— two— three times. Covers her mouth with one hand when she shuts it again, doesn’t swallow any spit. The constellation could wait until she goes back to the motel and can sit on the roof, meet up Stars and Night and ask for their help to find a spot where Orion can fit.

"I don't want to spend this last minute spilling my guts," Artemis says. "But I feel there are things I have to say, pray to myself."

"Looking at the sky with the moon and the stars is enough," Orion says.


	19. tough to be a bug

I have been a laurel tree for about a year. I think I have begun to understand the depth of my roots and the range of my branches, the shudder of my leaves and flowers. The butterflies arrived first, think I saw somewhere before this happened that they were drawn almost like a magnet to the trees who have nymphs. The bees tickled my ears — well, they tickled my flowers but it felt as if they were going into my nostrils and bumped my eardrums. Ants snipped off all of my hair and carried it off. I still haven’t been able to scratch the itch of their million feet and the poison from their minuscule pincers as they cut. The leaves are connected in a way that is more like my arteries and veins, because I feel every cut, cut, cut as it happens. It hurts, dear gods, it hurts but it’s a good kind of hurt. A bluebird made a home on me. I was put under a sleeping spell for the winter, when all my leaves fell and I hope to wake up to the buds of spring as the sprout from my scalp.

Love,  
Daphne


	20. moon

**[ Found in the notes app of a phone with a close-up high resolution image of the moon as the lockscreen ]**

**1:01am /** Earthly pleasures, I don’t know them but I think you might be it

 **1:22am /** You look at me every night before going to sleep. From a billion eyes I feel yours as something physical.

 **2:16am /** I look at you every night after you go to sleep. From a billion faces I’ve looked down upon I remember every line of yours.

 **3:48am /** Endymion.

 **3:49am /** Who do you worship and do you know my name?

 **4:00am /** Five hours of sleep is not enough and you keep shortening them. I haven’t had the courage to speak with you during waking hours.

 **4:30am /** But you have the courage to talk to me in the sky because you don’t know I have the mouth to respond.


	21. hands, wrists, teeth

“How can they still be growing?”

“I guess that’s for the experts to decipher, but I am not an expert. What are these?”

“Snowdrops.”

“Do de usually grow in the gums?”

“Well, I don’t know: do flowers usually grow inside bodies?”

“The x-ray shows the permanent teeth didn’t have a chance to appear, the flowers won them to it. Are there any notes on flowers that prefer bones?”

“I’m going to assume it’s white flowers.”

“Well, those are some mighty lily of the valley, they cracked her wrists and hands in… apparently six pieces. Hydrangea completely shattered her skull.”

“Mighty flowers indeed.”

“So, case open and shut? She ingested the seeds and the flowers grew.”

“No traces of seeds.”

“No traces of seeds? How did the flowers appear, then?”

“Guess that’s why they called us. If this is happening without eating seeds now, well. Now would be a good time to start worrying."

"But where do they start to grow?"

"Before it was on the stomach but this girl only had her bones broken... and look at the flowers. They are still perfect."


	22. into the woods

If you come into the woods during summer you will find all the trees basking in the sun, spinning around in a dance of adoration. With their laughter lost in the sound of their branches creaking and their leaves whispering. A god or two might stop by and they will queue to kiss their lips and hands.

If you come into the woods during fall you will find all the trees doting in party dresses of warm colours and veils of gold. Kissing their songbirds goodbye before they fly away. Sewing blankets with the last of the green leaves they can find and the moss of their barks.

If you come into the woods during winter you will find all the trees in deep slumber, dryads curled up the branches. Even the evergreens move slower, with the needles of their hair sprinkled in snow. If they sing and you hear it in the breeze they are doing it in dreams.

If you come into the woods during spring, especially when the clouds open for rain, you will find all the trees chanting. Having a party, green hair overwhelmed with flower blossoms so numerous they fall on their cheeks and eyelashes. All the music they need comes from the sound of their leaves catching raindrops.


	23. focus on the texture

**_Clotho:_** leaves her shoes on the living room and trips on them every time, chose the wallpapers with the flowers, keeps losing the grocery list, the texture of the atmosphere when it’s just barely dawn, can only spin the thread correctly while sleepwalking, gathers up destiny from the colour of the clouds.

 ** _Lachesis:_** organises everything by colour and size, somehow always forgets where she left her keys, saves every god in her phone by name and domain, only drinks wine that looks like gold, measures the thread with how long she can hold her breath for, hair stuck to the forehead from the midday sun, wears sunglasses with a frame of gold.

 ** _Atropos:_** keeps every window of her room open, covers up every mirror in the apartment, adds four spoonfuls of the future into her coffee, fingers are covered in paper cuts, scribbles with permanent marker right on top of photographs, tests the sharpness of the shears with her tongue, drinks the sunset with her hibiscus tea.


	24. black hole

The message from the Abyss started with _“My love…”_ but Gaea tapped to delete. She’d received three more that started with _“Remember when…”_ and _“The beginning…”_ and _“Chaos is…”_ and those too she had left unread. Tartarus existed separate from the planes of her body the way nothing had since the creation. With their son buried somewhere on her ribs, she preferred to never speak with him again.


	25. extinction

**name:** Antigone of Thebes

 **age:** Twenty-six

 **parentage:** Oedipus and Jocasta of Thebes _(note: tragedy spun by the Fates, nothing could be done)_

 **siblings:** Ismene _(living)_ , Eteocles _(cause of death: shot by Polyneices)_ , Polyneices _(cause of death: shot by Eteocles)_

 **cause of death:** Sentenced* to be buried alive by her uncle, Creon, the self-proclaimed king of Thebes of Seven Gates and saved from choosing to wrap her mother’s shawl around her neck and hang from a rocky ledge by me, Queen Persephone of the Underworld.

 **reason for sentence*:** Performing funeral rites on Polyneices’ body after King Creon forbade the family now under his control to do so _(note: may the Fates come for him next now that he has defiled the laws the gods laid out when it comes to the dead)_

 **observations:** Antigone will sign the right papers and will renounce to living to settle, dead, in the Underworld and so escape Creon. We aren’t privy to the stretch of Ismene’s thread of life but the house of Labdacus will soon perish entirely and disappear. So is the curse bestowed with the Necklace of Harmonia _(note: wasn’t found on Antigone)_


	26. serpentine

Athena picked up the heads of the serpents from her sink, dumped them one by one out the window and rinsed the blood with water. She grabbed her phone, didn’t type until the water overflowed onto the tiled floor.

 **6:08am, Athena said to Medusa:** Beheading won’t work and neither will leaving me offerings

 **6:11am, Medusa said to Athena:** I’ll see you again tonight, then


	27. fight or flight

“Come swim with us,” say the swans.

“I can’t,” you say, clad in whites and greys in an attempt to compensate.

“We’ll teach you,” say the swans.

“It’s not that,” you say. “My feathers were stolen and I can’t swim or fly again.”

“Who stole them?” ask the swans.

“My husband, he hid and locked the cloak away so I can’t take it back.”

“We can get your feathers back,” say the swans. “Come into the lake and wait for us to return, don’t go back to your husband’s home. You’ll be safer with us.”

“I don’t recognise any of your faces,” you say. “I was part of your flock and now I can’t remember my real name or that of my sisters.”

“We’ll help you remember,” say the swans. “And we will start with your name. What does he call you?”

“Just Blanca.”

“Blanca, you will be a swan again by morning.”


	28. ___ as a weapon

“We’ll give the priest back his daughter,” says Agamemnon, voice strained. “But a message will be sent as answer for our four losses: Briseis will die.”

“What?” The clicking from Achilles’ gun stops, there is no way to know if the safety is on or off. “You’ll use her as sacrifice?”

“As a warning.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can, I am the king.”

“It is not within your right.”

“It _is_ within my right, everything is within my right. I am the _king_.”

“Briseis is a child, not only that but a child under my care.”

“I put her under your care, Achilles,” says Agamemnon. “And I can take her away. Being a child doesn’t give her immunity.”

“Agamemnon,” says Nestor. “Do you even hear yourself?”


	29. monochrome

**Lethe:** the memories of when you were a child, when you don’t know if they were a dream or if you really saw those sailboats in the distance on a blue sea.

 **Acheron:** an image in grey scale that keeps the six-feet deep hole almost indiscernible among the tall grass and also hides the vultures.

 **Kokytos:** the white icon of a muted speaker lost in the white of the snow that drowns out the wailing coming from the forest.

 **Phlegethon:** only the varied tones of orange catch colour, pouring from the windows.

 **Styx:** a promise broken that ended in the death of the liar masked by the black shirt.


	30. dusk

The Hesperides open their hands, cupping them towards the falling sun for the moment it passes over the shoulders of Atlas. The only two minutes they have to gather as much of it as possible to water the tree with the golden apples, shining as brilliant as the setting sun and the empty sockets of the nymphs.

“Can I eat my part?” asks one, they have no names to call each other.

“You can taste the dusk on the apples.”

“But the light is more tender.”

“Catch smaller pieces of it in both hands,” says another. “We’ll need something, anything, from you to water the tree.”

“Alright, alright, fine.”

As the sun passes, Atlas’ shoulders burn and the Hesperides gather around to take handfuls of the coloured sky and the weakening sunlight.


End file.
